 Arthur
C. Clarke - a personal reminiscence
William R. Thomson
Mar 23, 2008
In the course of 48 years of
globe trotting and living on three continents and visiting or
working in five, I have been fortunate in the characters I have
met over this time span. Some were notorious such as Khieu Sampan,
a leader of the Khymer Rouge, who I met in the company of King
Sihanouk, his bitter enemy at the time Cambodia was trying to
reestablish its position in the world. Protocol demanded that
I shake his hand. I felt dirty. Another was Werner von Braun,
the inventor of the V1and V2 bombs in World War II and the scourge
of London during my childhood. Tom Lehrer, the American satirist,
had a song about him which included the lines:
'He's not hypocritical, he's
just apolitical, ask the widows and cripples of old London town
who owe their large pensions to Werner von Braun'. 'Unt German
and English I know how to countdown, und I'm learning Chinese
says Werner von Braun.'
I met von Braun in the mid
1960s when he was in charge of the NASA Space Centre in Huntsville
and I was a lowly flunky working on the Apollo Mission. I avoided
shaking his hand.
But 20 years later I had switched
professions and gone into banking. I had to visit Sri Lanka to
discuss with the government our bank's lending programme there.
As an aside, I had mentioned to a Sri Lankan friend my admiration
for the early work of Arthur C. Clarke, a founder of the British
Interplanetary Society. He said that Clarke was a friend of his
and I could probably meet him. I gleefully accepted the offer.
I was driven from my 5 star
hotel to a villa on the top of hill in the capital Colombo
and entered into a living room/office that closely resembled
Space Central Houston. Clarke welcomed me in a sarong and had
the absent minded mannerisms and attitude of a scientist from
an earlier age. But the surroundings were pure
futurology. An amazing collection of TV sets covered the walls
where the great man was tracking satellites for NASA. I spent
a fascinating couple of hours discussing developments in the
space programme, the implications for peace and war and the future
of mankind with a long discursion into oceanography and the health
of reefs around the world, his other great passion.
I left that meeting humbled,
knowing I had been in the presence of an exceptional thinker
- a visionary far ahead of his times - who had chosen to follow
his futuristic career - he was the author of Space 2001 and many
other books and movies - whilst living in the delightful but
relatively backward tropical paradise (if you forgot about the
war and terrorism as he obviously did) of Sri Lanka. It was an
amazing but delightful dichotomy. Had I had the experience in
Houston or Hollywood it would not have impressed me the same.
But for probably the first time I knew I had been in the presence
of a futurist and thinker who had had a measurable impact on
all of our lives.
At the time of our meeting
Clarke was just a plain Mister although he had been showered
with countless scientific awards. He was obviously wealthy and
had founded a university in Sri Lanka. The oddest thing about
the house was the total absence of any females and this, in a
country where maids are omnipresent. A few years later
he was awarded a knighthood by the Queen but a disreputable campaign
by a British tabloid accusing him of paedophilia caused him to
delay accepting the award in order not to embarrass Prince Charles
on his visit to Sri Lanka. He was later cleared of the charges
and accepted the award.
Sir Arthur C. Clarke died this
week but his memory will live on for many generations.
21 March 2008
William R. Thomson
email: wrthomson@btconnect.com
Bill Thomson is Chairman of Private
Capital Ltd in Hong Kong, a senior advisor to Franklin Templeton
Institutional in Hong Kong and to Axiom Alternative Funds in
London.
We always appreciate his contributions to 321gold. And
wish he would write a lot more for us.
321gold Ltd
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